Kerry at House hearing: The world is watching

Secretary of State John Kerry said the “world is watching” on Wednesday as he pressed the case for a limited attack on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, assuring skeptical members of Congress in a House hearing there would be no boots on the ground and the consequences of doing nothing would be far greater than the risks of action.

Kerry said there was additional evidence, “which came to us even today, that allies of Assad know his regime used chemical weapons against the Syrian people. Kerry also underscored President Barack Obama’s message that a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons wasn’t drawn by the president alone.

And he made clear there would be no U.S. ground forces involved in an attack on Syria — a top concern for Republicans and Democrats alike. “We have no intention of assuming responsibility for Assad’s civil war,” Kerry assured lawmakers.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey joined Kerry on Wednesday for a session that stretched four hours with more skeptics than the trio faced the day before in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce raised a number of questions about the potential consequences of a U.S. strike on Syria during his opening remarks.

“What are the chances of escalation?” the California Republican asked. “Are different scenarios accounted for? If our credibility is on the line now, as is argued, what about if Assad retaliates?”

Royce said he “welcomed” the president’s decision to seek authorization from Congress for the use of force in Syria but said he has a number of “concerns” about the second-order effects of a U.S. attack. “The president promises a military operation in Syria of limited scope and duration,” Royce said. “But the Assad regime would have a say in what happens next.”

Meanwhile, New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the committee’s ranking Democrat, voiced strong support for swift action against the Assad regime over its reported use of chemical weapons.

“I strongly agree with President Obama that the United States must respond to this vagrant violation of international law with a limited military strike,” Engel said, explaining that he’s opposed to the use of any U.S. ground forces in Syria. “We’re talking about the credibility of America as a global power.”

Several members of the anti-war group Code Pink were in the House hearing room on Wednesday, with one demonstrator telling the secretary of state as he entered the room: “Don’t start another war.” Another was escorted out of the room by a Capitol Hill police officer.

Committee members brought up a number of concerns about a potential strike on Syria, with viewpoints running the gamut from those who support the president in his call for action to those who are adamantly opposed. Kerry got into a heated exchange with Rep. Joe Wilson, who suggested the president’s decision to use military force against Syria now — instead of in April, when Assad was also accused of using chemical weapons — was motivated by politics.

The South Carolina Republican asked whether the president was trying to divert attention away from the rollout of Obamacare, the effects of sequestration, the upcoming debate over the debt ceiling and investigations into an attack last September on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

Kerry said that Obama did respond to Syria in April by increasing support to rebel groups and that the most recent allegations of the use of chemical weapons are “so compelling and urgent with respect to the flagrancy of the abuse.”

The hearing got under way as Senate leaders finished crafting a resolution authorizing the use of force in Syria, one that would put a time limit on any U.S. intervention and prohibit the use of ground troops. Dempsey declined a request by Royce to provide his views on draft resolutions in the House and Senate, saying instead: “Militarily, the broader the resolution, the more options I can provide.”

“The president has given quite clear guidance that this will be a limited and focused operation, not an open-ended operation,” Dempsey added, noting: “I can never drag the risk of escalation to zero.”

Congressional leaders balked at a draft put forward by the White House over the weekend that would have given the president wide leeway to carry out military operations in Syria however he deemed “necessary and appropriate.”

Wednesday brought a second day of hearings for Kerry, Hagel and Dempsey, who spent more than three hours on Tuesday testifying before the Senate committee.

Kerry took heat from senators on Tuesday after floating the possibility of sending ground troops into Syria — and then quickly walking back his comments, trying to make clear that President Barack Obama has no intention of sending ground forces into the war-torn country.

Meanwhile, the president said on Wednesday that “the international community’s credibility is on the line.”

“Keep in mind, I’m somebody who opposed the war in Iraq, and I’m not interested in repeating mistakes about basing decisions on faulty intelligence,” the president said at a news conference in Stockholm.